Every endeavor has been made to shorten the development processing time of a color photographic material. The development processing time of a color negative light-sensitive material has been extremely reduced by the introduction of C-41 processing by Eastman Kodak in 1972. The wet processing time exclusive of drying process has been shortened to 17 minutes and 20 seconds, and in recent years, the processing time has been speeded up to 8 minutes and 15 seconds by the introduction of rapid processing CN-16FA of Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. for a minilab market.
On the other hand, in the processing method of a light-sensitive material, in general, color development, desilvering, washing and stabilization steps are carried out. Taking development processing of a color negative film as an example, the reduction of the time of these development processing steps has been conducted mainly by the shortening of desilvering step, therefore, the speedup of the color development processing time is desired.
The shortening of the color developing time is feasible by raising the processing temperature of a color development processing solution and the concentration of a developing agent. However, it has been found that raising only the activity of the color development by these methods causes various problems. For example, the development of a red-sensitive layer of a color negative film, which is generally the lowermost light-sensitive emulsion layer, is relatively delayed, as a result, the balance of gradation is lost, and the deteriorations of color reproducibility and sharpness due to the lowering of an interlayer effect occur.
The present inventors further investigated and have found that a DIR compound having a high diffusibility is very effective for solving the above problems concerning the rapid processing. With respect to the technique of using a high diffusible DIR compound, various techniques have been disclosed in the past, for example, in JP-A-59-129849 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application") and JP-B-5-49090 (the term "JP-B" as used herein means an "examined Japanese patent publication"). However, there is no suggestion of the deteriorations of color reproducibility and sharpness at the time of rapid processing in these specifications, and the effect of the present invention cannot be foreseen from these patents. Further, there are disclosed in JP-B-5-84891 and JP-A-62-170955 the methods of improving graininess by processing a photographic material containing a DIR compound at 120 seconds or less color developing time. Although graininess is certainly improved according to these methods, the above problems, that is, the degradation of the balance of gradation, the deterioration of color reproducibility and the deterioration of sharpness are not improved.
In the meanwhile, a roll film having a magnetic layer containing grains of a magnetic substance on the back side of the film which is capable of magnetic recording and a camera for photographing having a magnetic head are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,196 and WO 90/04254. According to these improved techniques, printing quality can be improved and printing works and office works of labs can be expedited by magnetically inputting/outputting various informations to and from magnetic layers of films, such as identification information of the kind and manufacturer of a photographic material, information concerning the conditions at the time of photographing, information about customers, and information about the printing conditions and the number of sheets of reprinting. However, it has been found that when such a photographic material having a magnetic recording layer is processed with a processing solution of a developing agent of high concentration as described above, the capability of a magnetic recording layer is extremely deteriorated and satisfactory information cannot be offered.